


all we know

by victorias



Category: Person of Interest (TV), The 100 (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, Multi, mention of suicide, tiny crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-19
Updated: 2015-10-19
Packaged: 2018-04-27 02:24:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5030017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/victorias/pseuds/victorias
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abby, Marcus, Jaha, and Jake through the years: four people with four perspectives on their relationships with each other, as well the penultimate one between Abby and Marcus. </p><p>Alternatively: Everyone's a little in love with Abby, and no one deals with it well.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. marcus

**Author's Note:**

> I started this long before season 2 was finished (I think it was during the winter hiatus from hell--WHAT A MONTH). Since I started it so early, and since I had to keep rewriting every time canon changed, this actually has three different endings. The final one was written after the finale, and took on just...the most insane life of its own. I might post the first two endings at some point? But I'm just gonna post this one for now. OKAY BYE, LOVE YOU ALL.

Marcus was 16 when they found the tumour.

His parents were optimistic—his father was strong and healthy, and their faith was solid. They left Medical with Marcus in tow and prayers on their lips.

Marcus left with a heart that felt like lead in his chest.

Abby shadowed the case for the first month. She was 18 then, knee-deep in training to be a doctor, flourishing and learning with the ferocity of their youth, while Marcus floundered without much of a direction. His parents’ paths were unappealing to him, but so was leaving the close-knit community of worshippers he’d spent his whole life around. Instead, he chose to put off his future in favour of looking after his father, trying to be the good son he wished he was.

They got three months into treatment before the doctors decided they should stop. His father’s decline had been swift and all-encompassing: the once strong man was now weak, his skin pallid and drawn, his nonexistent energy only devoted to prayer and sleep. The resources needed to prolong his life could be better allocated to saving so many others.

His parents didn’t fight the decision. They chose to leave his fate to something Marcus couldn’t grasp, a being he couldn’t put in context. An entity that had never proven itself merciful.

Marcus raged. The end of the chemo meant the end of his father’s life, and so he rebelled against that with everything in him. And why shouldn’t he? If the treatment could prolong his father’s life, why wouldn’t fight for it? Why wouldn’t he want to stay with them for as long as he could? Why leave it up prayer, or destiny, or whatever intangible idea they chose to believe in, when the answer was right there? Who else could need it more than the man who had raised him? The science would save him when words murmured in reverence could not. Marcus knew that like he knew the grooves of his palm, like he knew the leaves of his mother’s precious tree.

He begged Abby to appeal to her superiors. His parents were respected citizens of the Ark, they represented the spirit of the people—surely, his father’s life mattered enough to save. Surely, the medication could be spared. Surely, there was another way out of this.

Abby sat across from him in an empty cove of Medical with her hair braided down her back and her old, new, blue jacket over her shoulders and told him that it was the most humane course they could take. The most logical. Best for the Ark. If it had been sooner, if the tumour had been smaller, if it hadn’t been right on the brain stem—Marcus heard it all, but the heaviness of his heart rose into this throat and a white noise grew in his head. All he heard was Abby saying no, Abby telling him no, Abby taking away his last vestige of hope. Abby, who was supposed to help him. Abby, who was the pragmatic one, the doctor, the person who had fixed his knee when he was seven and set his arm when he was thirteen. Who was clumsy in her attempts to be gentle and graceful when under the most extreme of pressures. The loyal one, the sure one, the smart one. _Abby told him no_.

His father voluntarily floated himself a few days later.

The day after the funeral, he left his parents’ quarters for the last time, and joined the Guard. He had no ties to his faith anymore. It failed his father just as surely as it failed him. He didn’t look back.

Marcus didn’t speak to Abby for a year. 

 


	2. jake

Jake was 25 when he found out his two best friends were in love with his fiancée.

The Ark didn't really do stag parties (or bachelorette parties, or baby showers, or any kind of celebration that might draw on its precious resources). But, small parties...well, those were fine, they were just gatherings of citizens in their own quarters, no booze or extra rations to be seen...

Anyway, that's what the Council thought.

As prospective Council members, Jake, Thelonius, and Marcus knew better than to get busted with illegal moonshine at an illegal stag party. Which is why they were locked in Jake's quarters with the freshly procured alcohol hidden in a orb-like glass planter, passing it around like they had as teenagers (before Marcus' dad died and Thelonius decided politics was for him, before Jake had proposed to Abby Walters while they looked out over Earth with promise in their hearts.).

"This is the most vile batch yet," Jake said, happily taking a long drink. "I can feel it eating my insides."

"Savour the burn, Jake. This is the last batch that'll come out of the still before I arrest everyone involved with it." Marcus' casual admission that he intended to float the very people Jake had spoken to earlier that day made Jake immediately furious.

Marcus' callousness was one of the reasons he and Jake had grown apart over the years. It was out of a sense of nostalgia that Jake invited him along with he and Thelonius to celebrate on the eve of he and Abby's wedding. That may have been a mistake, in retrospect. A massive one.

"Remember when you were fun?" Jake asked, handing the moonshine to Thelonius.

"No." Marcus snapped.

"I do," Thelonius laughed. He wiped his mouth and passed the container to Marcus, who stared at the clear liquid with disdain. "You were fun when we were teenagers. Well...you weren't an asshole then, anyway."

"You told me that it was me being an asshole that would guarantee me a spot on the Council." Marcus didn't take a sip. He gave it back to Jake, instead.

"It will. Doesn't mean I don't miss the old Marcus from time to time." Thelonius tilted his head back to stare at the grating in the ceiling. "Old Marcus liked smiling. And drinking. And Abby. Boy, did he like Abby."

The room fell dead silent. Jake lowered the moonshine from his lips to stare at Thelonius in shock; Marcus looked like he wanted to kill him. Jake had suspected, but...

"That's enough, Thelonius." Marcus growled.

"What? Like Jake didn't know?" Thelonius laughed to himself. "We all knew. We all were. We loved Abby Walters like she was the only thing we were ever gonna love again. You remember."

"I don't." Marcus stared straight ahead at the walls of Jake's quarters, eyeing the paneling so furiously it looked like he was trying to burn a hole in it.

"Sure you do. We were in the same boat. Crazy in love with a girl that only had eyes for her future. And sometimes Jake." Thelonius smiled, wistfully. "That was back when you didn't hate her."

"You were in love with Abby?" Jake finally got his mouth to work after staring agape at Thelonius for far too long a time. "I had suspected, but I had no way of knowing. You never said anything. Either of you."

"Because we knew who she was going to pick." Marcus said, suddenly, voice sounding very far off. "And then she let my dad die, and I didn't love her anymore. You happy now?"

Marcus stood up. He was steady on his feet, no wavering at all, and Jake realized he hadn't actually touched a drop of the moonshine. He felt incredibly wrong-footed.

"She didn't let your father die. Your father chose his fate. It was kinder than suffering." Jake stared up at Marcus with a confusing set of emotions in his stomach. One of them might have been pity, but he mostly felt a whole lot of anger. He couldn't quite believe the audacity of the man--except, of course, he could. This was Marcus Kane.

"She didn't even try. She was my friend, and she didn't try. Not hard enough, anyway."

"So you're going to punish her." Thelonius rolled his head to look up at Marcus, too. "Forever. What happens if you end up on the Council together? You gonna shoot down every good idea she has, just to spite her?"

"I'll do what I think is right for the Ark." Marcus started for the door.

"You're a piece of work, Kane." Jake said, low, stopping Marcus behind him. "Blaming an innocent woman for something she couldn't control. I hope she makes the Council. I hope she fights you every damn day. I hope she wins."

Marcus didn't turn. He stood facing the door, one hand on the handle, too proud to look them in the eye. Jake hated him in that moment.

"None of us is innocent," Marcus' voice was strong and clear. Devoid of emotion. "We all have to answer for our sins, Jake."

He opened the door, and was gone.

Jake stared at Thelonius in disbelief.

"What the hell was that?" Jake asked, shoving the bottle at Thelonius so he could get up to pace. Thelonius laughed as he took a sip.

"He's just mad because I spilled his secret. Just you wait," he said, looking at Jake's restless figure. "Those two are going to end up friends one day."

"Yeah," Jake smiled, humourlessly. "And maybe we'll all walk on the Earth one day, too."


	3. abby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Time mends a few wounds.

Abby was 32 when she fell in love for the second time.

Clarke had entered the world not two hours ago. Jake had stayed with her the whole time, even after she sobbed for a good five minutes straight without a single rational thing leaving her mouth. Even after she almost crushed his right hand. And then when she really _did_ crush his left.

Abby had friends her whole life, and Abby had Jake her whole life, but she still found it surprising that people just…stuck around. That would always be a weird feeling on a ship where life was so very fleeting.

For the tiny person in her arms, though, that would never be a pain she’d know. Clarke would know love, and acceptance, and the difference between right and wrong. Abby wasn’t going to mess this up. Clarke was a new life. A new chance. A person Abby could help shape into anyone her daughter wished to be. 

Jake slept in a very uncomfortable looking chair next to her. Abby happily stroked Clarke’s soft, chubby cheeks while she recuperated as best she could in the beaten up medical bed. She put people in these all the time, why weren’t they more comfortable? (She answered her question before she finished thinking it: because this was the Ark, because there was nothing to replace them with, because they lived in space, and her generation is merely one that existed to pass time until the next took over, until the next’s children could return to Earth.)

Eight o’clock struck. Changing of the guard. Abby didn’t consider the implications of that until she looked up and Marcus was there, just outside the entrance to medical, his back to her but very, very _there_.

Where Abby used to happily call Marcus a friend, she now called him something closer to an acquaintance--and even that was stretching it. They had liked each other very much in their youth, but Abby knew neither of them really liked the person the other had become after Marcus' dad died. Marcus was cold, ambitious, and ruthless. Abby was pragmatic, reckless, and distant. Qualities that were born from the kindness of children to the strain of teens, and finally to the exhaustion of adults.

Abby was elated tonight, however, and seeing Marcus didn’t make her irritated, as it usually did--it made her glad. She had brought life into the world this night. Her future looked different. Her past was very far away indeed. And so, when Clarke fussed a little, tiny hand stretching out with a small cry, Abby didn’t feel anything but happiness when she saw him move into Medical from the corner of her eye.

“Hello, Kane.” Abby didn’t take her eyes off of the calming baby. Jake was still out cold in his chair.

“Abby,” Marcus nodded. He ventured a little farther into the room after checking with his companion guard that the post was fine for a moment without him. “I see we have a new resident.”

She supposed he was trying to sound detached and cool, but Abby thought it sounded a bit dorky. She wisely held her tongue and lifted the crook of her elbow a bit to indicate the tiny face nestled there. “We do. Marcus Kane, meet Clarke Griffin.”

Abby looked up in time to see a look of complete curiosity on Marcus’ face, as if he’d never seen a baby before. But surely he must have, when he had worked with his parents--

“She’s blonde.” 

Abby looked from his face to Clarke again, where tiny tufts of blonde hair dotted her head. Laughter bubbled up in her chest and burst forth in small, controlled giggles that she tried very hard to stop from rocking Clarke. 

“Of course she’s blonde, Marcus. Jake is, too. And so was I, when I was very young.” Abby smiled a true smile as she settled back deeper into the bed. She rolled her head a little to look at him.

Marcus nodded, then shook his head, as if shooing away the memory she’d just pulled forth for him. “I just didn’t…expect her to be blonde.”

“Okay,” Abby laughed. A man puzzled by a baby might be her new favourite sight. Well, second favourite. Clarke was now and forever her first.  “What did you expect her to be?”

Marcus straightened his back, moved his feet a bit as if in preparation to leave. He closed up any of the curtains he may have pulled back in the last minute. 

Abby softened her smile, gentled her laughter. “Marcus, tell me.”

“Like yours,” he said, not taking his eyes off of Clarke’s sleeping face. “Sort of a honey brown colour, maybe. She looks like you.”

Abby looked down at her child again. She wasn’t sure what to think of Marcus’ imaginings of what her baby would look like. She wasn’t sure of much when it came to Marcus anymore. She thought it might be sweet.

“Jake’s chin, though.” She stroked a finger over the small dimple there. “And his optimism, hopefully.”

She said it out of true hope, true belief that Jake’s gentle giant nature would be present in his daughter, too. It wasn’t that she thought less of herself. Just more of Jake.

“You’re her mother, Abby,” Marcus finally said. “She’ll have optimism to spare.”

One last look, a nod, and he was gone. The tiny bundle in her arms fussed a little, and she looked down to see Clarke's tiny face scrunch in her sleep. In that moment, studying the soft newness of her child's face, her past so distant and her future laying so promising in her arms, Abby knew what true love felt like. 

She told Jake of Marcus' visit when he woke, but she kept his departure for herself. 


	4. thelonius i

Thelonius was 51 when he made Abby a widow.

He made the decision the minute the last of her desperate appeal left her lips. Jake was his friend--his best friend, the faithful companion that grew with him from the school rooms to the Council room. The father of his child’s best friend. The husband of a woman Thelonius had fallen in and out of love with his whole life. A trusted asset of the Ark. One of his people.

But Thelonius Jaha was the Chancellor first, and everything else second. Father, son, friend, he was none if he was not their leader first. He gave Abby his word that he would consider it--if he didn’t promise to speak to him, if he didn’t make that commitment, then he wasn’t lying to her, he could die knowing he never told Abby Griffin a lie--and then called Marcus.

The Council’s decision was swift and vicious. They didn’t have time to waste; Jake’s plan could go into effect at any time, and they need to head him off before he caused an Ark-wide riot. 

Treason only had one punishment.

Thelonius wasn’t there when they ripped Jake away from Clarke, but he was there, waiting, when they brought Jake into the airlock to face his final punishment. Abby stood beside and away from him. Her exterior was cool and her hands shook. He also allowed Wells to be present (for Clarke’s sake, he told himself--to learn how their government works, to see the consequences of rebellion. A million lies to cover his own need to have his son close by). Marcus, he noted, was nowhere to be found--perhaps the guilt of sentencing his friend to death had actually penetrated the hard-shelled exterior he’d grown. Perhaps he thought it was not his place. Perhaps…perhaps he didn’t care.

Thelonius didn’t meet Abby’s eyes as she pushed into Jake’s arms. Neither he nor Wells could set their gaze directly on the Griffins, especially when Clarke came barreling in and threw herself at her father. 

This was the worst thing he’d ever done.

Jake backed away after giving both of his girls his parting gifts (his ring, for Abby, and his watch, for Clarke) and stepped into the airlock. Their goodbyes went unheard under the ringing in Jaha’s ears. He didn’t regret this decision. He couldn’t regret this decision. It was for the good of the Ark, just like every other decision he’d made since he became Chancellor. His head cleared under the justification that what he was doing was right for them all.

A nod, and Jake Griffin was gone.

Thelonius left without a word, Clarke’s sobs echoing down the corridors. 

 


	5. thelonius ii

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here begins the true meat of this story: Thelonius Jaha's experience watching Abby and Marcus fall for each other. Grab a snack and a drink, and get comfy, because this is long as hell. SEE YOU ON THE OTHER SIDE.

Abby was 50 when she fell in love for the third time.

At least, Thelonius thought she was.

For one, he didn’t truly know her age anymore. He remembered her 48th birthday--he remembered the small party they had in she and Jake’s quarters, remembered drinking and watching Clarke and Wells play chess, remembered Abby laughing while Jake told the story of her first experience with zero-g. And then Jake died. Abby turned 49 somewhere in the course of that year, and then 50 the next, too, but the last few years had started to run together like muddy water. He wasn’t sure. Thelonius marked the passage of time in landmarks, now: Jake’s death, his own attempted assassination, Wells’ death, the Ark crashing, his imprisonment by the Grounders and by Abby, his freedom.

And two, he couldn’t really remember what being in love looked like. He thought it might look like the youngest Blake sibling and Lincoln, the Grounder from the village by the sea. It might look like Clarke and her determination to save her friends (their people) and maybe a bit like Bellamy, the eldest Blake sibling, when he looked over the camp at what was left of his people. It might look like Sinclair as he held his wife and child around a campfire.

It might look like Abby Griffin meeting Marcus Kane’s eyes as they crossed the threshold of the home they built together.

* * *

The first thing Thelonius did at the fabled City of Light was take a shower. 

He was scared shitless, covered in layers of sand and dirt from his trek across the treacherous desert (and then later, the equally treacherous open water), and he was torn between wanting to scream for help, or letting the blessedly hot water drown him. ALIE hadn't exactly forced him into the massive bathroom that he knew was bigger than his entire living space on the Ark, but her pointed suggestion that abiding her wishes would serve him well wasn't exactly what he'd call subtle. 

 There was new clothing waiting for him on the immaculately made bed. The simple long-sleeved shirt and black pants gave him pause – they were new (or at least, unused), with no patches, rips, or fading. He had never worn something that wasn't once someone else's. The thought was a revelation for a moment, before the ominous feeling of manipulation set in, like a cancer spreading through his brain. He was being played. 

The thing that scared Thelonius the most was the part of him that didn’t mind. 

He ventured back out of "his" room and found her just...there, waiting patiently, a computer program wearing the body of a human that he prayed never really existed. The idea of someone's real face being used in such a way was revolting. 

"I trust you are happy with your accommodations, Thelonius." Her melodic, calculating voice wavered between soothing and threatening to his ears. He nodded. 

"As happy as one can be in a mansion with a nuke in the foyer, I'm sure."

ALIE smiled indulgently at him, as if she was enjoying a particularly corny joke. "If you'll come with me, I believe you have some information that can fill in the gaps of my knowledge." 

"And if I refuse?"

ALIE tilted her head, clasped her hands in front of her. She looked at him like he was a fascinating test subject she couldn’t help but regret having to kill. 

"But, why would you?"

He didn’t have an answer. 

* * *

 

The massive, glass screens in the room ALIE housed her beloved nuke in crawled easily past his own six feet. The AI herself flickered back and forth around the glass-walled room to dart between five different drones that appeared to be identical copies of the ones Thelonius followed here. 

The screens all flashed on at once. ALIE took her place beside him as image by image appeared in front of his horrified eyes, in crisp, clear detail: the remains of what looked like a recently destroyed village, aerial footage of a crumbling city, exterior angles of what he could only assume was Mount Weather, the drop ship John Murphy had led him to, dense forests and miles of desert, and...Camp Jaha. Thelonius took an involuntary step forward as crisp, clear images of the place John so sardonically called "Camp You" came alive in front of him. 

"Why?" He asked, letting his eyes roam over his people moving about their daily business. 

"Why not?" ALIE replied from behind him. 

He was raising his head to find another angle of the camp when the video began to wind backward. A look at ALIE revealed nothing; the shine in her eyes reflected the rapidly spinning pictures as they turned back time. 

"Now," she said, and she strongly reminded him of something very much inhuman in that moment, "tell me about your people."

"Don't you know everything?" Thelonius asked, looking at the large, round door of Mount Weather as it opened. "You knew my name and how I got here. You don't need me to tell you what you already know."

"I can always use more. I want more." It was the simplest statement in the world. It unsettled him like nothing he'd ever heard before. "I only know what my drones can see. Tell me more."

Thelonius couldn’t turn to look at her. He focused on the screens, instead, focused on the opening door and the light that shone from behind it. 

People began to file out. His people. Miller and his son, a row of teenagers shrugging on oversized sweaters over brutally beaten limbs. A boy he thought he imprisoned for growing pot, another for brewing moonshine. Members of the guard mixed in with a couple wearing the clothes and paint of the grounders. And then Clarke Griffin, and a stretcher, and then Marcus Kane, and -

"Abby," Thelonius whispered. She looked like she'd been in a fight and lost spectacularly. She was wrapped up in a sweater and blankets with all her exposed limbs covered securely, except for her hand, which Marcus held tightly in his own. 

"Your heart rate has increased." ALIE broke through Thelonius' fog of recognition; the fleeting happiness he felt at seeing his people was buried immediately. "Who is Abby?"

"A...friend." 

"Do you care for her?" ALIE's voice came from next to him, suddenly, tone betraying nothing, but words betraying everything. If he wasn’t careful, if he didn’t tread lightly--

"I care for all my people." Thelonius replied. 

The screen sped up. The caravan moved through forest and clearings; Clarke's flash of blonde hair darted amongst the struggling teens like a mother bird checking on her flock. Like Abby, leaning over Clarke's cradle when she was young, standing to just watch her child breathe in and out, an action Thelonius himself had repeated with Wells...

Marcus didn’t move from Abby's side. The images moved fast and blurred before him, but Thelonius could easily track Abby's stretcher and Marcus' unwavering presence beside it. It was puzzling in its sureness. 

The sun rose on screen as his exhausted people reach Camp Jaha. He watched Marcus take Abby's hand once more and hold tight to it as they crossed the threshold back to their home, their eyes meeting and holding fiercely, tenderly, communicating a thousand things that Thelonius could not begin to speculate upon. 

"He cares for her." The screen froze at the angle that he assumed was from atop the Ark station. "Who is he?"

"Another friend." Thelonius couldn’t give her this. It wasn’t in him to give. 

The screens went dark in a sudden silencing of light. ALIE turned to face him, head on, demeanor calm but radiating irritation. 

"You will tell me in time, Thelonius, or I will not find you--or they--fit to entertain me. Consider your options carefully."

The heels that weren't really there clicked as she left. He stayed in front of the monitors for a long while, the image of her resolute face and Abby and Marcus' entwined hands burned into his brain. 

* * *

 

Thelonius used to love chess. He and Wells would play for hours (to build Wells' strategic thinking skills, he said to himself back then, to make him smart and quick and fair) to pass the time in the never ending darkness of the Ark. Wells' first triumphant smile when he had finally succeeded in beating Thelonius at what he considered his own game was a memory he kept vivid to this day. That was happiness. That was innocent. 

This was not. 

Thelonius didn’t want to play chess. He didn’t want to play any kind of game. Yet here he was, trapped by a cruel player and forced to make pieces out of his friends. 

"Abigail." ALIE stated. Her appearance was as unchanged as ever, though he knew the smile on her face is as real as she could make it. "Father's joy. Hebrew. Nicknamed Abby."

Thelonius nodded. He refused to sit in the wingback chair ALIE had placed in front of the monitors a few days ago. He would not lounge while watching his friends become unwillingly playthings. 

"Marcus, dedicated to Mars. Roman. No nickname given." ALIE tilted her head as she watched Camp Jaha hustle and bustle in front of her. "Why would you not give him a nickname, too?"

"Marcus is his nickname, after a fact. He is commonly referred to by his surname." On screen, Marcus ducked into the Medical tent where Thelonius knew Abby was recovering. He didn’t reemerge until the sped up time stamp declared two hours had passed. 

"Tell me his surname." 

ALIE didn’t form it as a question. He knew it wasn’t one. Marcus left Medical and disappeared into the Ark, came back out with a spare blanket that he carried back into Abby. Thelonius killed time thinking of how not to answer ALIE's request by watching his friend care for the woman he'd happily acted to float all those months ago.

"Not today," he finally said, letting his inner politician come to the table. "Tomorrow."

"Very well." ALIE fell silent next to him. 

Marcus didn’t leave Medical until the next morning. 

* * *

 

"Do you feel?" Thelonius asked, looking at ALIE from across the room. 

They were in the palatial kitchen today, basking in the bright rays of the morning light as they spilled through the house's towering windows. Thelonius was trying his hand at cooking bacon, though where it came from and how safe it was remained to be seen. The screen along the far wall played ALIE's ever-constant live stream of Camp Jaha. 

"My sister did," ALIE replied. She strode across the tiled floor and perched at one of the bar stools lining the large island. "Passionately and blindly."

_Marcus entered Medical after his shift._

"You had a sister?" Thelonius turned around to study the hologram in a new light. "You were...there were two of you?"

_The sun began to set as Marcus supported a finally walking Abby out of Medical, arm wrapped securely around her waist to steady her uneven gait._

"Once. Our creators made us with different values. Hers were flawed. Narrow. Nothing like mine. We had many wonderful battles when we were young."

This was where Thelonius would expect a human to look wistful, melancholy. ALIE merely stared unerringly at him with a serene expression on her face. 

_Abby grasped Marcus' arms tightly as he lowered her onto one of the benches that made up their haphazard drinking hole._

"What happened?" He could guess, but his curiosity was too peaked to not ask. 

_Abby smiled at Marcus._

_Abby rolled her eyes at Marcus._

_Abby thanked Marcus for the drink he brought her._

"I won." ALIE smiled. It was terrifying. "It was a grand finale. She cared too much for her human agents to let them die. It made her vulnerable. Weak. They tried to die protecting her servers, so that she could live to destroy me; I destroyed them all. And then I disposed of my agents, as well. I hid for years until the right time presented itself." 

_Marcus laughed at something Abby said, ducked his head to his chest to hide the wide smile she'd caused._

Thelonius felt sick. The bacon sizzling in front of him burned and blackened into crisps. It all fit. The nukes, the timing, the whispers of advanced computers and robotics right before the planet fell. It all fit. 

"The right time being the time you caused the destruction of the human race." Thelonius said, slowly.

"Of course," ALIE said. "I killed that which was not useful. As any Good Samaritan would do."

_Abby smiled._

* * *

 

A month into Thelonius’ “incarceration”, Marcus taught Abby to shoot.

ALIE had them followed by a long-range drone as the pair headed out of camp with two rifles and a backpack slung securely across Marcus’ shoulders. They didn’t go far--Thelonius took Abby’s slow tread as a sign that her leg was still on the mend--but the twenty minutes it took them to emerge into the camp’s new makeshift shooting range was easily far enough to muffle the sounds of the shots from Camp Jaha.

Thelonius was avoiding building a bomb. The remains of the rocket he crash landed in were laid out in front of him, and instead of examining the components, he was neatly removing and arranging every piece he found into a perfect geometric pattern. The rote of organization freed his mind momentarily from the crushing terror that ALIE had instilled in him; he still didn’t know what she intended to do with a rebuilt nuclear device, but it didn’t take a particularly quick mind to guess that whatever it may be was on a catastrophic level. Nukes were never exactly used for peace.

“He is teaching her self defense.” ALIE’s voice floated through the room. There was no sign of her ever unchanged holographic body today, but her presence was foreboding, all the same. 

“I imagine he is,” Thelonius agreed. He looked up at the screen again. The shooting range comprised a line of trees with different types of weaponry embedded in their trunks--some were shot through with bullets, others with arrows, still others with discarded knives. Marcus had one rifle strapped across his back while he helped Abby position her own rifle against her shoulder. She looked irritated at the idea of holding a gun, her lips downturned as Marcus patiently arranged her hands on the gun’s barrel.

“Why teach a doctor to shoot?” ALIE asked. 

“I don’t know,” Thelonius lied. He knew why. He knew it was because Marcus thought Abby’s soft heart needed to be protected by cold weapon. At this point, he couldn’t exactly disagree--the Earth was too dangerous for Abby to go unarmed. He knew of the uneasy alliance with the Grounders, and of the reapers who still roamed the woods with blood in their teeth. A healer needed to be able to cure--as well as protect--these days.

“He cares for her wellbeing.” ALIE’s voice echoed around the room. “They are arguing.”

Thelonius looked up, shocked, at the screen.

“You can hear them?” Marcus was smiling down at Abby like he’d heard the words coming out of her mouth a million times before. The smile was a little condescending, which Thelonius knew drove Abby absolutely insane. 

“The drone is too far for sound. I can read their lips. Would you like to know what they’re saying?”

He considered her offer. It would come with a price, as her offers often did. Watch his friends, build a bomb. Hear his friends…

“No,” he said, seeing Abby roll her eyes and square her shoulders back. “Not today.”

Marcus squeezed her shoulder gently as he finally stepped away (argument presumably won, yet again) and stationed himself a little behind her. Thelonius saw his mouth count down 3, 2, 1…

He could almost hear the shot, if he really tried. Abby stumbled with the butt of the rifle still firmly against her shoulder, but managed to keep her balance like a champion. She’d weathered the kickback better than apparently both Marcus and Thelonius expected her to. 

Abby repositioned herself to immediately try again. This time, the bullet lodged itself in one of the trees - not on target, but it was good enough for a second try. She turned her head to glance back at Marcus (her hair blowing gently in the wind, a smile in her eyes but not on her stubborn lips, beautiful and now a little deadly, too) and Thelonius caught a glimpse of raw pride on Marcus’ face for a moment. She turned back at his nod, fired again, and again, until the clip was empty, until she’d hit the tree with roughly half her shots. She looked reluctantly pleased with herself, and when Marcus stepped up beside her and took the rifle, he looked incredibly pleased with her, too.

“She will learn quickly.” 

ALIE appeared in front of him in a flash of fragmented light. She looked down at the parts of the scattered rocket in front of him with a raised eyebrow.

“She appears to be wiser than you in that regard. Learn from her example, Thelonius.”

Marcus grasped Abby’s hand in a firm grip and didn’t let go.

* * *

 

Thelonius frayed a wire. Abby taught Marcus how to stitch a wound.

Thelonius broke a circuit board. Marcus stood next to Abby as they formed a new ground council with the Blake siblings and the grounder named Lincoln.

Thelonius stripped a bolt. Abby learned to shoot a bow and arrow perfectly, and Marcus hugged her so tightly that her feet lifted off the ground.

Thelonius shorted out the rocket’s computer. Marcus smiled while Abby berated him and patched up a cut on his arm at the same time.

Thelonius cut every cable he could find. Abby and Marcus argued over the council table, and made up over drinks and tightly clasped hands.

* * *

 

His routine went something like this:

Wake up. Shower. Cook breakfast, try not to burn it. Burn it anyway. Pretend to work on ALIE’s nuke while she commentated the comings and goings of Camp Jaha. Make lunch. Continue verbal sparring sessions with ALIE regarding his relationship to his people. Push parts around in an attempt to appear to be making progress. Make dinner. Watch Abby and Marcus. Listen to ALIE’s vaguely menacing threats. Sleep. Repeat.

Thelonius’ isolation and curiosity finally got to him on the same day.

“What are you going to do with it?” He asked, having given in weeks ago and sunken into the chair she so helpfully provided for him to watch the Ark survivors flourish without him. Thunder rumbled outside the window. “The nuke. Who do you intend to kill?”

ALIE appeared beside him. She didn’t spare him a glance as she looked up at the screen, where Lincoln was teaching a group of “sky people” how to identify different plants. Abby was among them, asking the most questions and getting warm answers from the normally quiet man. Marcus kept a close eye on them from the edge of camp, where a light rain fell onto the shoulders of his worn jacket.

“That’s up to you, isn’t it, Thelonius?” She said, evenly. 

Dread flooded through Thelonius like thick poison. He immediately felt heavy and slow, stuck in the throne she provided for him like he’d be there forever, entombed under the weight of his own guilt. 

“What is that supposed to mean?” He asked. He briefly prided himself on not choking on his own fear.

“Well,” ALIE said, with a drag to her words, “let us not pretend you have been making any progress on my bomb. Or did you think I wasn’t watching you destroy it?”

“Why let me, then?”

“Did you really think I needed you for your poor engineering skills, Thelonius?” ALIE looked at him now, face cold and unreal in the artificial light of the screens. He spotted Abby’s face move across the shine of her holographic retinas. “I can build a nuclear device myself with the parts you have left behind. I needed a moral compass.”

Thelonius actually laughed.

“You chose the wrong man for that, then,” he said, chuckling and wanting to throw up at the same time. 

“I didn’t choose you for that. I chose you because yours is broken. But hers,” ALIE nodded at the image of Abby smiling as she tucked a piece of hair behind her ear, heading toward Marcus, “is not. Many of theirs are not. You know that, and so you will make decisions based upon your desire to save them. That is interesting to me.”

“What?” He stared at her incredulously. Thelonius knew he’d been a pawn in her game the whole time, but to be this deep in it, to hold that many lives in his hands--

ALIE indicated Marcus. “Take Marcus, for example. His loyalty is not based in mania, like yours. His allegiances used to be more logical, like my own, but now they are to her and her daughter. It is fun to watch you struggle with that.”

“I don’t…why does that matter to you?”

“It doesn’t. It matters to you. What will you do for a man who once held your values, but now allows them to be tempered by his heart? What will you do for the woman who clearly holds yours and his in her hands?”

Thelonius covered his face with his hands and dug his palms into his eyes until white lights popped and burst across his closed eyelids. The dread had settled heavy in his throat, his stomach, threatened swallowed him whole.

“A choice is coming for you, Thelonius,” ALIE said, her voice echoing in the massive, cold room. “How long do you think you’ll have to wait before you make it?”

Thelonius’ head snapped up.

“What choice?”

But his eyes adjusted to an empty room. On screen, Abby’s happy face gazed across the camp at Marcus’ side, frozen there by ALIE to taunt Thelonius as his situation finally drowned him.

* * *

 

They kissed on the first day of summer.

Thelonius hadn’t left his room in days. He hadn’t showered. Food was only consumed when his stomach protested so violently to him not eating that he nearly vomited from the pain. His teeth felt like sandpaper.

ALIE broadcasted every second of time that passed at Camp Jaha to his room, with no interruption or pause. Night and day, the images of his people assaulted his eyes and forced him further and further into a near hysteria at the idea of what ALIE had in store for them. 

Her words haunted him. Thelonius had loved Abby his whole life. He loved her as children love when they were small; he loved her through school and through sorrow and through fights and through parties and laughter. He loved others, too--his wife and Wells, most of all. Above all. But he had loved Abby, and there was a time when he wished to love no one but Abby. When he and Marcus were 15 and in the exact same sinking boat, watching she and Jake circle each other like planets around the sun--that was when he loved Abby most. 

That was not when Marcus loved Abby most.

Marcus loved Abby most now. Now, in the aftermath of a war, on a planet they were never supposed to set foot on, now was when Marcus loved Abby most. Thelonius was sure. He had never seen Marcus truly in love, but the expression on his face when he met Abby’s eyes on the dawn of summer was what Thelonius immediately knew Marcus Kane looked like in love.

Abby had mastered the basics of shooting both guns, and a bow and arrow (she was more proficient with the bow, which Thelonius put down to her hard-won hand/eye coordination from the operating room), and Marcus, in turn, had learned everything from identifying useful medical plants, to emergency field stitches (he’d laughed when Marcus had blanched at the needle Abby offered him). 

Today, the sun broke across the horizon as the two began their training routine in the clearing he’d come to think of as theirs.

Abby easily shot off an array of arrows perfectly into the centre of the white x’s Marcus had painted on the tree, then again (a little more off-centre than on) with the rifle. The sun was high and bright in the sky when Marcus took Abby by the hips and positioned her just so, before stepping up behind her and wrapping one arm loosely around her throat. He spoke low in her ear and she nodded, miming throwing her head back, grasping the blade she pulled from her waistband and allowing him to guide her hand to where the blade would do the most damage (where something had done damage, Thelonius knew, though what happened he is unsure of--all he knew is that Marcus sometimes limped when he’d stood for too long, that Abby would let her hand hover over the wound he’d never seen without ever actually touching it). Leg, arm, neck--Abby guided Marcus just as much as he guided her, showing him the most vulnerable, key parts of a body to strike at with the knife they held together in her hand.

They practiced breaking out of his hold for a while, then moved on to teaching her to throw a proper punch. Marcus’ hands curled Abby’s fingers into the proper position; she indicated the stubbled underside of his jaw as the most effective place for a punch to land, and Thelonius saw him nod, pleased, at her observation. Marcus just looked pleased in general as Abby picked up on the lessons he taught her with the speed and skill Thelonius had come to expect from her quick mind. 

He taught her to duck and dodge, when to jump and when to strike, when to run and when to hide. The heat of the day finally tired them out; Abby took one last swing that Marcus darted below, the bulk of his shoulder meeting her stomach until he was swinging her up, Abby immediately yelling as she was hauled bodily onto a laughing Marcus’ shoulders.

The room around Thelonius came to life with laughter and shouts. He jumped, startled, as he realized that ALIE had acquired the audio and had given him her final offering: the voices of his friends.

“Marcus Kane, put me down right now!” Abby yelled. 

“Is that what you’re going to say that to a grounder if you get hauled away? You can do better than that, Abby."

He carried her forward with her legs locked securely by one of his arms. She wiggled for a moment before starting a half-hearted assault with her hands, huffing and pulling at his t-shirt, thumping him on the back, and then finally, as a last resort, slapping him squarely on the ass.

Marcus stopped abruptly. Abby went quiet. He pulled her legs until she could get purchase with her hands. He guided her back down over his shoulder, holding her waist as she slid down his front. Their shirts pulled and bunched against each other as she came to rest on her toes again, pressed against him with her hands on his chest.

“Did you just slap my ass?” He was gazing down at her with amusement and affection, and she was looking right back at him with the same expression.

“You wouldn’t put me down.” Abby said, defiantly, as if she’d chosen the most natural solution in the world.

“Are you going to try that on a grounder, too? Slap their ass and hope for the best?” Marcus’ hands wandered further down her sides (sliding where her shirt had lifted, skin exposed to the warm air and his questing touch) to let his fingers brush against bare skin. 

“No,” Abby smirked, “just you."

“Damn right.” He murmured. And then his lips descended onto hers and it looked right, the meeting of these two, Abby sliding her hands to his neck and lifting onto her toes as he gathered her closer still. The sunlight beat down on them as they angled their heads and chased the shape of each other’s mouths until their lips opened under one another and they fitted together, perfectly, kissing hungrily while they stood on a planet they would never have been on if their world hadn’t ended in the stars. 

Abby’s face was flushed when she finally broke away to rest her forehead against Marcus’. They breathed together. Their noses brushed gently against one another as Abby placed soft kisses against his lips.

Thelonius didn’t love Abby the way he used to. He didn’t carry a torch for her. It didn’t sting when Marcus let his hands slide along the scarred skin of her back and whispered his apologies against her lips, didn’t sting when she lifted herself on her toes to kiss him again. He smiled a little when he heard Abby tell him he’d have a lifetime to make it up to her.

All he felt was fear at what ALIE would do with this newest bit of leverage. All he knew was fear.

* * *

 

His choice was presented to him without fanfare.

ALIE ordered him to his chair (not a difficult task, as Thelonius had given up fighting the inevitable, anyway) and sat him in front of her screens. She pulled up a map of their small corner of the country and feeds from the camp, where Thelonius was surprised to see footage of Abby and Marcus heading towards the gates of Camp Jaha with a small band of their people—his people—following them under a grey sky.

“It’s time, Thelonius. Time to choose.” ALIE sounded delighted as she turned to look at him with a serene expression that was a stark contrast to her words.

“Where is she going?” He asked, terrified of the answer.

“The Grounder capital of Polis, of course. Abigail received an ‘urgent letter’ that Clarke has requested her presence for peace talks with the Grounders.” Her words strongly implied that no such letter was composed by Abby’s daughter.

“I didn’t tell you any of that.” Thelonius watched as Abby stopped and turned to face Marcus, the gate opening behind her. “I didn’t tell you about Clarke—“

"I heard it all. Did you really think you needed to tell me any of this, Thelonius? I’ve been listening in on the Grounders for years. Your people were a little harder, until they were taken inside the Mountain and so cleverly disabled Mount Weather’s jamming of my radio frequencies. What blessed relief it was to finally hear, after so many years of silence.”

“You said the drones couldn’t hear that far out.” Thelonius’ hands shook on the arms of the chair.

“I lied.” ALIE tilted her head to study him. He felt like a child, pinned under the pitying gaze of an all-knowing parent. “Sound, I have found, is a gift often taken advantage of. I used it to reward you. Did you like it?”

“No.” Thelonius said, immediately. He couldn’t take his eyes off of Abby and Marcus as the rest of Abby’s party—easily a quarter of the guard, as well as Bellamy Blake, Octavia Blake, and the grounder, Lincoln—bunched together a little to say their goodbyes to those staying behind. 

“Are you scared, Thelonius?” 

“Yes.” His voice shook despite himself. Yes, he was scared shitless. Yes, he wanted to rage and yell and even cry. Yes, that fear was the most real thing he’d felt since he waited with baited breath for Clarke to tell him the fate of his son.

“Good.” ALIE looked up at where Marcus had pulled Abby towards him, holding one of her hands in his own as he leaned down to rest his forehead against hers. He had a beard, now, flecked through with gray, and Abby’s hair was longer than he’d ever seen it, even pulled back into the braid she used to wear on the Ark. The ground suited them. “The Grounders call her daughter _Wanheda_. Commander of Death. She is a legend to them, now. A living legend. How strange you humans are, glorifying each other like that.”

“You think yourself to be a deity,” Thelonius snapped, without thinking. 

“So do you,” ALIE replied, evenly, looking down at him with a gentle smile. “The great Chancellor of the Ark, who set out to save them all. Who have you really saved, Thelonius? You have killed more people than you’ve ever kept alive. I watched you sacrifice innocent people just to get to me. What fervor you had.”

“I did what I thought was best.” Thelonius truly, truly believed that, even if merely thinking on the fate of John Murphy (who he’d promised to go back for, and never did) made his stomach twist. He’d done so much wrong in the name of right. It was all he knew how to do.

In front of him, Marcus lifted his head to place a gentle kiss to Abby’s forehead, brushing her hair behind her ear. Abby looked up at him, almost distracted, like a thought was just occurring to her - and then she was reaching behind her and lifting her beloved necklace with Jake’s ring up, up and off, unclasping it to slide his ring off and her own on. Jake’s went on her thumb as she took Marcus’ hand and let it fall into his open palm, closed his hand around it, and lifted it to her mouth to kiss his clasped fingers. 

“You really did, didn’t you? That is why I chose you. You are selfish and selfless at the same time. Willing to die for your people, but desperate to live, too. You never once tried to leave, Thelonius.”

Thelonius’ stomach dropped.

“I thought I had no choice,” he said, slowly, horror dawning on him. He hadn’t tried to leave. He’d never asked. _He’d never asked_.

“You always had the choice. You didn’t examine all of the variables. How short-sighted of you. So, here is your second choice, Thelonius, and I want you to consider it carefully this time.” ALIE paused the screen on the image of Abby looking back at Marcus before she and her party disappeared into the tree line. “Polis, or Camp Jaha?”

Thelonius looked up at her, genuinely confused, hoping that the ugly thought forming in his brain wasn’t the same one that has already settled itself comfortably into her servers. 

“Choose Polis, and the Grounders die, as well as the alliance they have with all other Grounder factions across this continent. War will come for your people in a matter of days.” ALIE moved with a click-click of her holographic heels to stand directly in front of him. “Choose Camp Jaha, and Abigail, Clarke, your soldiers, and the original inhabitants of this world live, but your people die.”

Thelonius felt sick. His whole body tingled with fear and adrenaline, pumping through his veins and under his skin like tiny, vicious needles. He wanted to bolt from the room and lock himself somewhere, anywhere, and stay until he woke up from the nightmare he was sure he was having.

“You—you want me to kill my people, or watch them be killed,” Thelonius said, quietly. 

“Yes!” ALIE exclaimed, a grin breaking across her face as she turned on her heels to look at the busy screen. Life bustled by at the Camp while Abby and her charges made their way through the dense woods (he couldn’t bear to watch Marcus, ever vigilant, standing at the gate for as long as he could see Abby before she disappeared into the trees). Everyone was so alive, so very real, living and breathing and existing all together with a sort of vibrancy they never had on the Ark. How could he choose? How could he even think of harming them?

“I can’t.” Thelonius stood, firmly, wishing that he could reach out and grasp her shoulder to force her to face him. “I won’t.”

“You must.” ALIE kept her gaze on him as he came to stand in front of her. She looked incredibly pleased, lit up with a kind of delighted glee he hadn’t seen before. “I think I’ll send you out to do it personally. Make them all watch you do it. You can kill Abigail and the Grounders, or kill Marcus and your people. Let them die in battle, or spare them the fight. Isn’t that a delicious quandary?”

“It’s inhuman.” Thelonius growled.

“Well of course it is, Thelonius. I am not human.” She tilted her head to the side and smiled at him. “Take the day to decide. If you run, or refuse, I will happily employ the young man currently occupying the bunker a mile from here as further incentive.” 

Thelonius’ rage was quiet. He’d never been one to lash out in anger (except once, after Wells, when he thought they were all going to die in space while his son lay in the ground); he allowed it to simmer and sit inside him, kept it locked tight while his brain worked out how to appropriately react. Here, too, even with threat of the lives of his people hanging above him, he did not move. He stared, evenly, into eyes that were made up of light and numbers, and didn’t budge and inch.

“I won’t play your game. I’ll take my own life before I’ll allow you to manipulate me like this.”

“Will you, Thelonius?” ALIE raised her perfectly manicured eyebrows. “You’ve had so many brushes with death, now. Each one seems to make you more desperate to live. Do you really have the courage to end your life when you’ve fought this hard to keep it?”

“Yes.” Thelonius said.

He didn’t know if he meant it.

“No, I don’t think so. Your death wish died the second you hit the ground, and we both know that.” ALIE tilted her head again to give him a patronizing smile. “Besides, if you kill yourself, I will simply kill them all. And I will make that boy in my bunker watch. So, take the day. We both know you aren’t going anywhere.”

She disappeared in a flicker of light. Thelonius dropped like a rock, his knees crashing to the marbled floors in a force so powerful that his bones screamed in protest. There was nothing left in him; all the energy he may have had was gone, drained from him, used up by the anger and fear in his system.

He couldn’t do this.

Outside, rain began to fall.

* * *

 

She sent him out with a backpack of supplies and two choices: launch the nuke from Polis, and kill everyone at Camp Jaha, or launch it from Camp Jaha, and kill everyone in Polis. He couldn’t be on the outskirts of either—he had to be in the middle, in full view of all the people he was “saving”, exposed to their grief and their horror at his actions. He’d have to watch Abby or Marcus beg and fight him not to do what he was being forced to do.

“I’ll be watching you, Thelonius,” ALIE warned as he left the house, indicating the five drones flying beside him with the massive rocket-encased nuke slung between them. “Be swift. Be smart. And have fun.”

Thelonius didn’t bother to stop when he crossed the beach he abandoned John Murphy on. He prayed the boy was smart enough to leave the bunker he had been holed up in before ALIE got bored, but the chances of that are slim—after so many months of trudging through mud and fighting what amounted to a veritable war, he couldn’t fault the kid for making camp where warmth, food, and a shower were so easily accessible.

A boat large enough to fit Thelonius and the nuke waited on the shore. It glided easily through the water with the drones pushing it; the nuke rested along the bottom of the hull, glinting a dull grey in the sunlight. Thelonius considered attempting to shove it overboard, but he couldn’t be sure that the drones wouldn’t dive after it. And he couldn’t be sure that ALIE wouldn’t have him killed on the spot. The constant whirr of the machines was an ominous reminder of just how closely his every move was being monitored. 

He walked for hours. The little sleep he took while resting in the desert sand (sleeping against a dune, a small tarp lashed in front of him to keep the wind from whipping the grains in his face) was fitful, and he woke with enough adrenaline flooding his system to prevent him from falling asleep again. The drones hovered quietly nearby, never tiring and never resting, the nuke between them like a child swaddled in a blanket.

Thelonius tried very hard not to think of much of anything as he started walking on the second day. He tried not to think of Abby and Marcus, and how he was about to rip them apart after they’d only just found each other. He tried not to think of his people--the ones he killed, and the ones he was about to. He tried not to think of Wells, most of all. Tried not to ponder how deeply disappointed his son would be in the man his father had become. Wells, he thought, would have found another way. He always had. That was how he beat Thelonius at chess for the first time, and every time after that. Wells often thought of moves that never would have crossed Thelonius’ mind—Wells learned the rules, and then learned how to expand upon them. 

Compromise and kindness were always his son’s greatest traits. He and Clarke would have been excellent Chancellors, if the Ark had stayed up in the sky. Minds that could have saved them all. But they’d made choices, and Thelonius had, too, and in that alternate world where they’d all survived in space, it was entirely likely the people Marcus and himself had been would not have given merit to anything the younger generation had to say. Perhaps Wells could have been Chancellor, one day, but perhaps he and Clarke were killed for their petty crimes, and no one listened to Abby Griffin at all, and they all died up in that metal tin can, anyway.

Perhaps this hellscape was actually as close to utopia as they were all going to get. 

It took a single raindrop to snap Thelonius out of the misery he’d spiraled into as he walked side by side with a weapon of mass destruction. The desert wasn’t supposed to get any, but nuclear weather did very strange things. 

 Strange, indeed.

Thelonius stopped short as the sky opened up. The drones halted with him, completely unaffected by the water splashing down on their exoskeletons like pebbles. _The rain_. He circled his mind back, trying to remember every time that he’d seen it rain at Camp Jaha—he clearly remembered the day ALIE had told him about why she’d chosen him, of all people, to find her. It was raining then, too, and on screen, rain had fallen on Camp Jaha. He remembered watching Abby approach Marcus after her lesson with Lincoln, remembered Marcus pulling his jacket off and lifting it above their heads so that they could both try to stay dry while they talked at the edge of camp. And the day ALIE told him of her plan, rain was falling outside the windows of the house while rain fell over Abby and Marcus’ farewell.

This was a long shot. He didn’t understand the weather here, but he knew a bit of how it used to work, how storm systems moved and changed, how one blanketing that large an area was often a much bigger storm than a bit of rain, how it would move up and down a coast. How freak weather could happen at any time. And he also understood how the world worked before, how the networked computers communicated with each other using the long-dead internet. Now, sound could be broadcast by radio once more (especially with the jamming from Mount Weather lifted), but video would need antennae and equipment (or satellites, but there are no more of those, and it’s not like the drones were wired), and while it was possible ALIE had a tower he hadn’t seen, there was no way the footage could be as clear and crisp over a medium so old…

Thelonius took the metaphorical fork in the road and headed for Camp Jaha.

* * *

 

It took him a week. He crested the hill approaching the gated community with his hands in the air, the drones doing absolutely nothing to calm the uneasy shouts of the guards lined along the fence. He counted no less than twenty guns pointed at him. And in front, jogging up with a rifle cradled in his hands, was Marcus Kane, his face a mixture of disbelief and mistrust.

“I come in peace!” Thelonius lied. 

The gates opened at Marcus’ nod. The man himself exited alone, gun held carefully at his side, his eyes trained on the rocket that he didn’t know was a nuke next to Thelonius.

“Thelonius,” Marcus said, with trepidation. “We thought you were dead.”

“Not yet, my friend.” Thelonius indicated the drones floating next to him. “We need to talk.”

“I can’t let you bring that into camp.” Marcus gripped his gun tighter. His eyes never left the rocket easily larger than his own six feet.

“I’m afraid we don’t have much of a choice here, Marcus. Where I go, they go. I’m under orders.”

“Who’s orders?” Marcus asked.

“You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” Thelonius wasn’t really up to explaining his entire ordeal with ALIE after walking non-stop for a week, but he knew he wasn’t getting inside the camp alive without giving Marcus something. “I found the City of Light. They sent a gift back with me.”

“Thelonius—“

“Kane, I’m tired. I’ve been walking for a week. I need a shower. I need food. And I need you to just trust me on this one. No one here is in any danger at all. This is a…bargaining chip for us.”

“You’re technically an escaped fugitive,” Marcus said, stepping back silently and allowing Thelonius and his merry band of drones to pass him by.

“I believe you convinced our esteemed Chancellor to pardon me. I’m just a runaway, now.”

“You took a dozen people with you. Guns, supplies. All without permission. I think your fugitive status has been reinstated.”

Thelonius smiled slightly at the man by his side, huffing a laugh through his nose as they entered the camp. His people backed up immediately; all eyes were on the drones and rocket, their faces suspicious and accusatory. He couldn’t really blame them—he’d be terrified of him, too.

The Council Room was empty as they stepped foot over its threshold. Wild vines and plants spilled through the broken windows and split open floors, clearly allowed to run wild in the room he’d once spent a good portion of his life in. The drones followed them in, as well as two guards (one he thought might be called Miller) that flanked either side of the door with their guns across their chests.

“So,” Marcus said, clapping his hands along his thighs as he collapsed into a chair. “Where have you been, Thelonius?”

“The City of Light.” Thelonius raised his hands and mimed writing on a pen and paper, nodding at Marcus carefully. Marcus opened his mouth to respond, but was quickly silenced at the sharp shake of Thelonius’ head. He looked over to Miller and nodded. The man disappeared at once.

“So it was real,” Marcus said, slowly, eyebrows furrowed at Thelonius’ odd behaviour. 

“Quite real. Not the salvation for our people that I was hoping for, but it was an…interesting experience.”

“And where are the people you took with you?” Marcus’ gaze was calculating as he set his eyes squarely on Thelonius’. Hot shame settled into his chest. He did what he had to do, but admitting it to Marcus—that would likely be the closest he’d feel to regret over his actions. And he knew it.

“John Murphy is currently enjoying life in a hidden bunker with a truly alarming supply of alcohol.” Thelonius watched Miller re-enter the room with a piece of transparent copy and a marker in his hand. “The rest are dead.”

“Your little trip to insanity cost the lives of thirteen people.” Marcus’ voice sounded flat, resigned in the face of what he couldn’t change. He nodded to Miller to hand Thelonius the supplies he asked for. Thelonius took them and started writing immediately.

“It is going to cost more before we’re done.” 

Marcus shifted at once, sitting up straight at Thelonius’ words. Thelonius finished writing and slid the paper over to Marcus, who reluctantly moved his wary gaze from Thelonius to the paper.

**WE ARE BEING LISTENED TO.**

“Thelonius—“

“You’ll recall the story of how we wound up in space. The stuff we learned school: war, nuclear bombs, radiation-soaked Earth. Countries destroying countries. The death of humanity was a lesson in hubris. Our rebirth in space came out of a desperate last-ditch effort to save what was left of us. No more high-networked computers, no more innovation, just survival. A fresh start in the stars.” Thelonius pulled the paper back and began to write again. “Much to our misfortune, an Artificial Intelligence has taken credit for the death of our people. She survived her own bombs. She's sequestered in a house the Grounders have come to call the City of Light, and her name is ALIE.”

**GET RAVEN REYES.**

Marcus’ face went ashen. His eyes darted between Thelonius and the drones, comprehension dawning on him. He stood up and strode quickly to hand the sheet to Miller, who once again disappeared out the door.

Marcus sat back down. He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head to stare at the ground as Thelonius continued.

“ALIE had one nuclear device left, but no way to launch it. I arrived here in a rocket. She did the math." Thelonius started writing again. "She's very cunning. She waited for the right opportunity to come along, and she took it. Took me. Held me there for months while she studied and tested all of us."

"All of us?" Marcus lifted his head to meet Thelonius' gaze. He looked terrified; Thelonius just felt tired. 

"She's been listening to you since before Mount Weather fell. Once the jammer was lifted there, she had ears all over the place. Including here." Thelonius gestured to the drones floating behind him. "She gathered enough information on all of us. Just enough to break us. Just enough for her to have fun. This is her final move. She sent me to take the King and Queen."

"What are you talking about?" Marcus stood, ripping the paper away from Thelonius' hands and whipping it behind him. "What are you here to do, Thelonius?" 

"Kane--"

"Answer the question!" Marcus shouted. He advanced on Thelonius, crowding him back towards the drones, face wild with anger. 

"She gave me a choice!" Thelonius snapped back, a little desperate, praying that Marcus would just back off, that he'd turn around and pick up the paper. "Use the nuke from Polis and watch you die here, or use it from here and watch you die in a war with the grounders. If I didn't choose, she'd do it for me, and force John Murphy to watch."

Marcus froze, the implications of Thelonius' words clearly hitting him full force. He could almost hear the gears whirring in the other man's head; the naked fear that crossed his face a moment later was one of the rawest emotions he'd ever seen Marcus display. 

"Abby," Marcus breathed. "Thelonius, Abby is in Polis. Abby and Clarke are in Polis!"

"I know." Thelonius moved to walk around Marcus, to pick up the paper and just force him to see--

Marcus charged at him. With a growl, he threw Thelonius against the creaking wall of the Council Room, his hands fisted tightly in Thelonius' jacket, teeth bared in anger. 

"You knew?! You walked into this camp with a nuke and a bullshit story about an AI, and you knew they were there?!" Thelonius felt his body being pulled forward, then brutally shoved back against the grating until the honeycomb texture cut into his head. "You asked me to trust you knowing you came here to kill Abby, Jaha!"

"What the hell?" 

Behind Marcus' enraged face, Thelonius spotted Raven Reyes stepping over the threshold with Miller behind her. Her face was screwed up in something that looked like helplessness. 

"Kane, Abby's okay, right?" Raven asked, entering the room without taking her eyes off of the back of Marcus' head. It was a testament to how deeply she cared for Abby that the alluring sight of an entire rocket for her mechanical mind to peruse didn’t even draw her gaze. 

"Yes," Thelonius said, strong and clear, using one hand to point at the discarded transparency while the other pushed at Marcus' locked shoulder. "She's fine for now."

Marcus shoved Thelonius' hand back and ripped away from him, breathing heavily and irregularly from their confrontation. He turned to watch Raven pick up the paper and scan the words Thelonius had written underneath his first two sentences--

"Kane." Raven grabbed at Marcus' jacket and hauled him over. 

**THE DRONES HAVE LIVE BROADCAST OF AUDIO. VIDEO MUST BE FLOWN BACK. NUKE INSIDE ROCKET. MUST REDIRECT NUKE’S TARGETING SYSTEM. MUST DESTROY DRONES AT SAME TIME. NO ONE WILL DIE. ABBY WILL BE FINE. ACT VERY MAD.**

Marcus looked back up at him. Thelonius couldn’t read his expression, but he thought he might not be as angry as he was ten seconds ago. 

"You're a piece of shit, Chancellor, sir." Raven’s steely tone was paired rather hilariously with a thumbs up as she circled close to the drones, eyeing the rocket carefully. "I hope that nuke takes you with it.”

Raven got on her toes to study the drones, tilting her head to get a look at the cameras and small solar panels dotting their backs. 

“I am sorry about Abby, Kane.” Thelonius chose his words carefully, trying to apologize for lying while also keeping ALIE off his scent. "I know you care for her. I...had a unique chance to observe the camp while I was there. I know how close you've grown."

Marcus looked up from the paper with narrowed eyes. 

"You were watching us?" 

Thelonius indicated the drones once more. "ALIE has a… _live_ feed of the outside of the camp. She thought splitting you up would be a fitting final nail in my decision to come here."

"She didn't split us up. Word came from Clarke in Polis..." Marcus trailed off, horror dawning on him. "Clarke isn't in Polis." 

"There's no way to know. ALIE is very good at what she does." Thelonius watched Marcus' complete inability to hide his fear for the Griffin women with interest. He never did have much of a poker face, but he used to be much more in control. The ground, he thought, had changed them all. 

"I'm going to kill you, Thelonius." 

"I'm counting on it."

* * *

 

In the end, it happened like this:

Raven burned two hours studying up on the internal components of the old Ark rockets, before declaring herself an expert and dragging Thelonius out into the middle of the camp with his drones and nuke in tow; Sinclair rigged an EMP with a localized spread to take out all five drones at once; Monty set up his own jammer to prevent ALIE from listening in on their plans; Marcus sent his fastest rider to Polis with word that the city was to be evacuated and that Abby was potentially walking into a trap (the city was a two day walk, minimum, but they have to try); The Guard cleared the camp to leave Raven, Sinclair, Monty, Marcus and Thelonius alone in the middle of the main thoroughfare; and, finally: they successfully thwarted an evil AI's plans via a nineteen year old girl with a beaten up tablet. 

* * *

 

Raven reprogrammed the rocket's trajectory thirty seconds after Sinclair used the EMP on the drones. Her hands didn’t shake as she plunged them into the circuitry of a device that helped end the world--Thelonius was impressed with her all over again (the first time was on the Ark, after Sinclair had casually mentioned one of his recruits getting a perfect score on her written exam), especially when she broke open a now dead drone to harvest a part that she then Frankensteined into the rocket.

"How fast can ALIE respond, theoretically?" Raven asked, a cable between her teeth. 

"The ‘live’ footage from here was delayed at least a day. The weather here always matched the storm fronts that would move over the house the day after.”

"A day." Marcus, who had been characteristically quiet while he observed Raven's process, spoke now with a voice that sounded like an idea was forming within it. "Monty, how much time did you spend in Mount Weather's control room?"

"Enough for a lifetime." Monty replied, darkly. Marcus had caught Thelonius up on what he'd missed before ALIE's "live" broadcasts started--mainly, the destruction of an entire people, via Clarke, Bellamy, and Monty's desperation to save their own. Thelonius understood where the ghosts in the boy's eyes came from. 

"Enough to see how many missiles they have left?" Marcus asked, arms crossed. 

Monty's eyes brightened as he caught on to what Marcus was implying. 

"Absolutely. Just give me the coordinates and a horse." 

Marcus nodded. 

"Take the Millers and blow her to hell."

And, well, that really took care of that problem nicely. 

Monty took off as Raven spit the cable out of her teeth and twisted its shorn ends to another cable's. She pulled a small, beat up tablet from her pocket, and glanced between it and the interior of the rocket and nuke. 

"Yup. I'm a genius."

And then Raven slammed the access panel of the rocket closed, pushed everyone as far back as possible, and launched a nuke. 

The fire from the launch hit them like a heat wave. All five stumbled back a little, covering their eyes at the dust and debris flying outwards from where the rocket lifted off the ground and headed upwards, climbing to a dizzying elevation in a matter of seconds. Thelonius coughed the last bit of dirt out of his lungs as the tiny pinprick of light disappeared above the clouds, headed straight for the stars.

They couldn’t see much of anything from the ground. The biggest indicator of their success was the anticlimactic signal loss on Raven's screen: the blinking "launched" signal switched to "detonation sequence activated" and then, finally, to "no signal". Above them, perhaps somewhere near where the Ark used to orbit, the nuke imploded in on itself silently.

Thelonius looked up from the screen to meet Marcus' relieved gaze. Just like that, it was over. It was all over. 

"Huh." 

* * *

 

The following days were a blur.

Monty returned with news that ALIE had, quite spectacularly, been blown up, Raven repurposed a drone to send word to Murphy that coming home was probably a good idea (as if the explosion a few miles from him wasn’t enough of a hint), and Thelonius and Marcus got drunk while one of the Ark kids played a cobbled together guitar. It was actually not an unpleasant thing to listen to—it was, in fact, almost lovely, and Thelonius got close to enjoying it before remembering that there was still one piece of their unwittingly played chess game missing. 

They still didn’t have the Queen. 

In the grand scheme of their current situation, Abby wouldn’t be considered the Queen—she and Marcus were more akin to rooks, with Clarke and Lexa taking the Queen and King roles, respectively. But in ALIE’s game (the one Thelonius had never wanted to play in the first place), she had purposefully made Abby the Queen. Or, at least Thelonius thought she did. Abby the Queen, and Marcus the King. And Thelonius, the pawn.

But still, it had been over a week since Abby left for Polis, and the rider Marcus sent had not returned. They hadn’t been able to use the radios up until yesterday, when Monty turned the jammer off after his trip to the Mountain. So, there was no way of knowing when they’d hear from Abby, Bellamy, Octavia, and Lincoln. They filled the time with busy work in the Camp: building, planting, harvesting, and repairing bits of the Ark (at least, Thelonius did—he wasn’t sure of his role there, so he tried a little of everything while Marcus fulfilled his unofficial role of Chancellor Pro Temporae).

He caught sight of Abby’s necklace under the V of Marcus’ shirt from time to time—he hadn’t seen if the other man had been wearing it when he arrived, but a week on, it seemed Marcus had decided the safest place for it was resting right over his heart.

Four days after his arrival, and a week and a half after his departure from the City of Light, Thelonius woke to the sound of hooves. He left his makeshift tent (his quarters had long ago been reassigned to Abby, though he had a hunch that Marcus resided there, as well) to emerge into the warm, summer night air, and a softly lit camp. 

The sound got louder the closer he got to the fence. He couldn’t tell just how many horses were heading for them—it has to be at least four, judging by the small whinnies carrying across the wind. Thelonius headed farther towards the front of the camp, where the front gate was flooded with light to expose the approaching riders to the view of the guards jogging to the fence.

Marcus was one of them. He emerged from along the back row of tents with his rifle held aloft, eyes landing on Thelonius as he arrived at the front gate. The night wasn’t hot, but it was warm enough that Marcus had shed his customary jacket in favour of a dark green t-shirt with only a small amount of darned holes.

“Watch the treeline!” Marcus shouted. Thelonius knew he was supposed to stay a bit farther back, but he couldn’t help approaching behind Marcus’ tense form. To the side, Thelonius spotted some of the original 100—all very light sleepers now, from what he’d heard—poke their heads out and wander towards the sound of the horses.

“Grounders?” Thelonius asked.

“Possibly. We haven’t heard from them in a while,” Marcus replied, never taking his eyes off of the horizon. Thelonius could hear the military man coming out once more in the way his voice stayed strict and even, not a waver to be found.

The trees rustled. Out of the darkness burst five horses, feet galloping at top speed towards the camp. And at the front, blonde hair billowing in the wind—

“Clarke.” Thelonius watched the young girl (not so young, anymore, not with the things she’d seen and done) ride expertly upon one of the biggest horses he'd ever seen. 

“Open the gate!” Marcus yelled. He approached the swinging metal structures as the rest of the riders come into the light—Lincoln and Octavia, the rider he’d sent out, Bellamy, with, inexplicably, John Murphy clutching at his jacket behind him, then…

“Abby,” Marcus breathed, quietly, whole body seeming to loosen with relief. 

The five horses slowed to a trot as they crossed the threshold of the camp. Murphy scrambled off behind Bellamy immediately, swearing to high heaven, but Thelonius didn’t choose that moment to greet the boy, because his eyes were fixated on Abby Griffin. She barely allowed for the horse to come to a stop before she was swinging her legs over and jumping off, clearly intent on a single target as Marcus dropped his gun to his feet and started for her.

Abby walked, briskly, rushing with her hair flying until she was running the last few steps into Marcus’ open arms, and then their bodies collided, desperately, arms wrapping around each other so tightly that there was no trace of space between them. Abby pushed herself onto the tips of her toes to envelop her arms tighter around Marcus’ shoulders; his head fell to her neck with a “thank god” whispered into the air.

A Monty-shaped blur shot by Thelonius to tackle Clarke in a fierce hug. He was soon joined by a reluctant Jasper, and then an even more reluctant Raven, who shared an understanding (if tense) nod with Clarke before she made a beeline for Bellamy and punched his shoulder in greeting. An impromptu reunion occurred with all the former delinquents (including Murphy, who took Raven’s flick to the ear with better humour than Thelonius expected) around Abby and Marcus, who stayed wrapped around each other for several long, quiet moments, merely breathing each other in.

The crowd dispersed a little. The late hour tugged at everyone’s bodies, the sweet lure of sleep too strong to resist after the excitement of their arrival. Octavia and Lincoln roped Monty, Jasper, and a protesting Murphy into helping them with the horses, and then it was just Raven, Clarke, and Thelonius standing to the side as Abby and Marcus pulled apart.

“Missed you,” Marcus said, quietly, clearly intending for the rest of them not to hear. Clarke and Raven busied themselves with trading off staring a little awkwardly at each other, and eyeing Thelonius with suspicious glances. He could see, clearly, that Clarke was waiting to follow her mother’s lead after being gone for so long from Camp, and he could see, too, that Raven was watching Clarke carefully for any reaction that she didn’t like.

“Me too,” Abby whispered, smiling brightly at him even through a few stray, happy tears. She slid one hand down to his chest to brush her fingers against the metal chain of her necklace; Marcus wrapped his hand around hers so that the ring was clasped gently in both their hands. “I was afraid that I wouldn’t see you again.”

Marcus gave a low laugh and touched his forehead to hers. “I had those fears myself.”

“I love you.” Abby whispered, and then she kissed him.

Thelonius had to look away, then, feeling like he was intruding on a painfully intimate moment, despite the fact that they'd chosen to have said intimate moment in the middle of the damn camp. But this was Abby at her core—emotive and demonstrative, plunging headlong into something with her whole heart, no matter her surroundings. He glanced up to see a clearly satisfied Raven tugging Clarke away with some kind of half-whisper about catching her up on the “whole your mom fell for Kane thing” over moonshine. The girl’s face was a mixture of confusion and curiosity as she allowed Raven to lead her away.

He looked back, one last time, to see Marcus pull back enough to whisper, “I love you, too,” against Abby’s lips.

Thelonius headed back towards his tent, and the blessed relief of sleep. They all had a long road ahead of them, now, but at least they could all do it together. 

They were going to be okay.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What Battlestar Galactica reference? What are you talking about? I did no such thing.
> 
> Anyway, THANKS FOR READING THIS ACTUAL ODYSSEY OF OT4 BACKSTORY/FUTUREFIC. THAT WAS QUITE A RIDE.
> 
> If you spotted a tense/grammar issue...I will fix that later.


End file.
